Starting starting

Is it ever too late to start? I tend to think not. Probably because I’ve been waiting around a good portion of my life for things to start happening. I mean, I still got up in the morning, made my way in the world, I have had accomplishments, but things have always felt like…”someday.” Do you know that feeling?

To be recognized. That’s what I dreamed of. I want to be recognized but am deathly afraid of being recognized. I was raised with a healthy daily dose of “don’t impose” and be humble to the point of shame. Now, that is not to make my parents bad guys. They were expressing their own inner trauma/fear. But still, as I have had my kids and watch them and see how truly and utterly confident they are born, knowing without a doubt that they just are, and that they belong, and that they are enough in themselves, I feel a little sad for who ruined me…and my parents…and you…and everyone. I want to be funny about that, but it makes me profoundly, deeply, sad when I think about it.

That said, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Sitting in a pool of sadness will make you all wrinkly and sopping wet. Who wants to drown in a puddle of tears when you can doggie paddle your way out of the darkness? I think I have beat this analogy to death.

So, I am there. I am here. I am not waiting for someday anymore. I am not waiting to win the lottery, or when the kids get grown, or when I lose weight, or when I pay off some bills, or when the pandemic ends, or even until Monday. I am not waiting any more.

So here’s my plan: start moving.

That’s it. I have had so many brilliant “I’m gonna get started” moments where I make lists and plans, that I never quite finished and that never quite happen. I’m not saying that having a plan is a bad thing. You gotta’ have some idea of where you want to go or what you want to do. But it is easy to spend the “I’m fed up with my life” capital on making a list and imagining a different life. That UMPH! can get a little less umph!-y while you plan and wait. The urgency begins to wain and you start telling yourself that you need to really concentrate on putting this one thing together to get started, or you really need to have a really clean house before you can start something, or you really want to wait until Monday because it just makes sense to have a measurable/targeted start date. Y’all, I have even delayed starting to try and get healthier because I didn’t have a scale and didn’t want to start until I knew my starting weight (so I could later celebrate/brag about how much I lost). For real – this happened.

I’m tired of planning. Years ago, y’all, when I was trying to break a bad habit, I saw all of the advice folks had about weaning yourself off, giving yourself a break, stopping in slow manageable steps. That works for some. For me, I quit by quitting. I don’t quit by slowing rolling it. I quit by stopping. I think action for me is going to have to be the same way.

I cant start by planning. I have to start doing. And I KNOW that is the thing they teach you in project management is THE WORST way of doing anything. Planning should be the longest part of the process. But it has been. I found a plan the other day that I had written in a notebook in 2005. Y’all this coming out has been a long time coming.

So I am doing. I am not procrastinating. I am not someday-ing. I am NOW-ing. I am doing.

Liz SMASH!

You know, by nature I am a pretty chill gal. I don’t believe in violence towards my fellow man. That includes actions or even words. I think the world would be a better place if we were all a little kinder to each other. Then there are those days….

Today is one of those days. Probably because I didn’t sleep well last night, possibly because I am a bit hormonal, definitely because I am just tired. This is tired beyond sleep, beyond anything even a week off from work can cure. This is the kind of tired that has set into my soul because I feel like I am always being pushed, by everything and everyone all the time. Choices, right?

I try to keep it together. I think this is partially a result of growing up fat. When you’re the fat kid the one thing you can’t do is let other people see you struggle. If you struggle or need help then you fulfill every fat stereotype out there. You’re not capable. You’re lazy. You’re a “can’t” and a “don’t” all rolled up into one rolly-polly package. Fat people can’t do things, so don’t become a fat person. Being fat isn’t a physical failing. It is a moral one.

So, I try to keep it together. But some days, when I take a moment to look up from having my nose on the grindstone, I wonder what it’s all for.

It’s like folding underwear. What’s the point?

And sometimes that makes me angry.

I’m not generally resentful of my life, because: Choices. There are times, however, when I want to scream and throw things like a 2-year-old. I’m normally, happy, fun, loving Liz. But in those moments, I want to become LIZ SMASH!

Of course, then who is gonna’ have to pick up the broken pieces though?

I mean, I don’t really want there to be broken pieces, not of my life. I just want to pressure to stop. Stop asking for things, or asking me to fix things, and put on your own dang socks, kid! Let me have a minute when I am not being pushed or pulled by anything, by asks and expectations. And, really, when I think of it, I want other people and things to stop putting expectations on me.

Really, though, are they? Probably not. There is one person in my life who is responsible for every dang bit of pressure put on me. Surprise, it’s me!

Not only am I responsible for the pressure to please, but I am also responsible for taking on so much that I feel like I have to juggle frantically to keep up. Does everyone feel this way?

I don’t know how to take on less or to put aside my need to try and live up to what other folks expect. I am the go-to person. I am the one with the answers. And most of the time I like that role. I like being in charge and in the know. The thing they never tell you, when they put on that supreme ruler of the world crown, is that there are downsides. Once the crown is on, it ain’t coming off. Not to sleep, not to eat, not to have five minutes in the restroom where a kid isn’t asking you to brush their hair or look at what they just drew. Heavy is the crown, right?

Really, I don’t resent my life. I LOVE it.

Then, what do I do now? Well, with anything in life, if you want it to grow, you feed it. When I’m feeling negative, when I’m feeling resentful, or angry, I’m not going to feed that. Instead I feed the things I want to grow. I look at pictures or videos of my kids and my husband. I make a list of things that I want to accomplish – positive goals. I watch a little stupid reality TV, or listen to music and flip through a magazine mindlessly. I am both distracting myself and finding things that make me feel good so I can feed that, not the negative. I look at what I have and I look at the situation I could be in – people certainly have it a lot worse off than me. I focus on gratitude and attitude. And sometimes, I even fake it.

Today, my coping mechanism is writing. Today, I started out with some angry words pointed at someone I love, and now I am typing these words and realizing that there is someone I need to apologize to.

So, I will. I will put on my big girl panties (the ones I don’t bother to fold) and I will apologize. And I will post this blog. And I will get on with it, answering the questions, fixing the problems, brushing the hair, being the pretty chill gal that I am. Because when the anger passes, I don’t want there to be any broken pieces that I have to pick up. I don’t want to be broken and I don’t want to break anyone else.

I would, however, occasionally like a break…but that’s another blog for another day.

Happy Thursday, people!

The Ugly Truth

Can we just talk for a moment about the ugly truths in life? For instance, it is an ugly truth exercise and food are not equal on the weight loss equation. Now I consider myself a hard worker, and I am always the one who will choose to “get the butt-whoopin’ over with” as we like to say here in the South, meaning, get the hard work out of the way. So, by that standard, if I want to have a single nice dinner with wine or eat half (whole) of a pizza in one sitting, then me working out a full five days ahead of time should totally cancel that out, right? I mean FIVE days compared to ONE meal. In fact, by my reckoning I should have more calories to eat. Yes, garçon, I will have dessert with that.

But, no…

That is not the way the equation works. Weight, like your reputation, requires a delicate balance. Sure, everything can be great one moment and you can be at the top of the world and everyone’s darling, but one small slip up, one questionable decision, one tiny little killing spree and all of a sudden everyone looks at you differently. It’s like your years of volunteer work and paying your taxes on time are totally negated by murdering a few people…even if they had it coming (slow drivers in the fast lane I’m looking at you).

The same holds true if you murder a whole cake in one sitting. You can workout until you are sweating buckets for days. You can work at watching and tracking your calories/macros/points diligently at every meal all week. You can practice techniques that make you healthier: relaxation, de-stressing, getting more sleep, deep breathing, hydrating, meditating, etc. In the end though, one wrong move, one wrong meal, has a bigger impact on the scale than all of your many Zumba moves ever did. It’s just not fair!

Ok, speaking of truths, one not so ugly truth: Exercise makes you feel good.

My daughter “working out” at gym class. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

I KNOW, I KNOW! Exercise can feel awful. I’ve been there. Exercising makes you feel all sort of unpleasant sensations: out of breath, sweaty, muscles screaming, homicidal thoughts towards your trainer and/or the folks who look cute with their gym “glow.” Me, I don’t glisten. I poor buckets of perspiration as if my body is sobbing from my efforts. While you are doing it, exercise can feel like a cross between punishment and torture, but when you’re done…even beyond the endorphins…you feel good.

It’s true. There is something to be said for knowing you really pushed your body. There is a certain reward in feeling your muscles, even when what you feel is pain. And there is a whole lot of mileage you can get from complaining about it on social media and/or in person. People get it. People can hate the gym with you. As humans, beyond all of our differences in political affiliations, religious practices, gender/race/economic/age/etc. disparities, beyond everything that makes us different, the one thing nearly everyone can agree on is that going to the gym sucks! So use that as fuel, as fodder, as whatever it takes, but exercise, because really…secretly…it kinda’ doesn’t suck (but we don’t have to talk about that awful truth anymore today).

So, yes, the truth is exercise – putting in the work(out) – is not going to cancel out to the one meal you eat with gusto (and with a side of fries). Sorry, the math just does not work that way. But that’s OK. Weight loss will not be your reward for eating a whole pizza (do you all sense a trend here in what my weakness is?) no matter how many crunches you do. Unfortunately, it’s what you crunch on in the kitchen that really make a difference for weight loss. Nevertheless though, exercise rewards you with feeling great and overall health in the long run. It allows you to feel stronger, faster and less stressed. You may not lose weight just by exercising, but you may curb some of those homicidal tendencies you have when faced with gym glisteners, slow drivers, or people mispronounce the word “espresso” as “eXpresso.” If not, at least you will have plenty of time to workout in jail…

Ugh!

You know how they say if you can’t say something nice then say nothing? I’ve always tried to follow that rule of thumb even on the internet. Or maybe more of a, “If you can’t say something fun or funny, then can it!” Well, today is the day, fair readers, that I cannot say anything nice, so I figured why not start a blog? I don’t know that a negative frame of mind is the best way to start anything, but for me I think this is as much about finding a way out of this mindset as it is expressing why I’m here. I’m writing myself happy. Is that a thing?

So, this blog is called WaitLife. It is about how life doesn’t…wait, you know? I’m a mom. I’m an employee. I’m a wife (That’s probably a bit out of order). I’m a daughter. I’m a friend. I’m a volunteer. I’m an artist. I’m a writer. I’m a leader. I’m a colleague. I’m a boss. I’m a subordinate. I’m obese. I’m trying to lose weight. I workout. I watch too much Netflix. I have too much debt. I’m an online news junkie. I’m a self-improvement addict. I’m a little bit lost, but…I am hopeful.

I am too many things it feels like sometimes. Isn’t that the state of things, though, for every modern woman? Men too, I guess. We are barraged by info, and can know anything with a few clicks or a few random internet searches. Yet, at the end of the day the one thing I walk away knowing from the vast information landscape that is the internet is that I am failing – hard core. I can’t keep up.

My house is not HGTV-esque. My job is not a glamorous, “Working Girl” style success story. My kids are not from a Disney show family where everyone talks nice to each other  and learns a lesson at the end of the day. My friendships (and my fashion sense) are not Carrie Bradshaw worthy. My marriage is not a grand romance where we spend stolen moments gazing lovingly (or longingly) into each others’ eyes. And no matter how loudly I play my music I cannot seem to cue the montage where I suddenly get my shit together, start jogging and drinking green smoothies, while I simultaneously become a rock star at work, the Clorox queen/earth mother at home, and still find the time to blow my husband’s mind in bed, while making other women jealous of my perfect hair and nails.

Dude, the montage is key to this redemption story and I seem to be stuck in the pre-montage part where I haven’t had that ah-ha moment and it all clicks into place and everything becomes easy and even entertaining, set to a nice, upbeat pop song. In fact, that’s not even true! I’m not looking for easy, because if I am nothing else I am a nose-to-the-grindstone, balls-to-the-wall, hard working mama! No, I don’t need easy. I just need direction (and to understand the whole “balls to the wall” cliche because even as I wrote it, I realized I do not understand why/how that works).

I need a road map. I need a plan. Plans and lists are my jam. They make me feel like I’m in control even as things totally spin off their axis. I have no plan. I have no clue how to even come up with a plan. Everything is chaos and more keeps coming. I feel like I am juggling while playing dodge ball. THAT is the best description of my life. Wait, I’m juggling, while playing dodge ball, on hot coals. I’m multitasking, while dealing with stuff that comes flying at me, while trying to look/sound like I’m not burning my freaking feet. It’s like I’m politely drowning here. I can’t stay afloat, but I’m trying not to offend anyone with my cries for help. Do you ever feel like that?

WaitLife isn’t going top solve all of that. I just hope it gives me an outlet. I don’t have a plan, but I still do have hope. I’m still trying.

So…the P.S. part: WaitLife will be about being a busy woman, a mom, an artist/DIYer. It will be about my life and my weight loss (I hope) journey. WaitLife will be about how I navigate the fact that life doesn’t wait. It will be about my “normal” life in all of it’s mundane glory with wisdom and humor and (I hope) entertainment. I hope this becomes an origin story. I would love to become a super hero, or at least someone who is quicker than a sarcastic comment, more powerful than the glass ceiling, who leaps out of bed in the morning excited to greet the day…not flipping the bird (because: patience), not looking too plain…just SuperLiz.